In comparison with sunshine we'd been enjoying in UK our first couple days here was questionably wet and windy. Yesterday afternoon and today have been thankfully sunny so my good lady is a happy bunny throughout. Our hire car, a Fiat 500 has no resemblance to a stretched-limo. If any smaller we'd be crushed inside it. Working on the principle we can fit into a Ryanscare seat .......... our little egg of a hire car is luxurious. We've given-up on the motorways so today we programmed our sat-nav to avoid toll roads and voila, we've no need to go over 50km/h so we can drive well within the limits of our capacity. Unfortunately, having a littler than little car doesn't hide us from nasty policemen and we got us a parking ticket when we lunched at Viana de Castello, where we visited today. Now the challenge is "How do we go about paying the soddin' thing?" That can be our first job tomorrow.

When we were visiting Azores, last July, we almost fell in love with the local vinho verdi. We have now renewed our acquaintance and are steadily working our way through as many varieties as we can. T'is a wonderful 'green' wine and well worth visiting Minho (N Portugal) where it emanates from. Unfortunately it's only available in glass bottles, which means we've a lorra glass to dispose of properly. Another of our more recent accomplished necessities has been to find a decent (low price) beer (in cans). This might sound easy but it looks like the Portuguese prefer their beer in bottles. T'other day we settled on two different varieties (both mongrels) on shelves in local Lidl. Pushing the boat out, we bought two of each to blind taste-test. In between some delightful vinho verdis, we opened a can of each beer. Summarising, I liked the one Sue didn't give me and Sue liked the one in the red can, which were obviously same! Hence today we stopped at a Lidl and loaded-up. Very expensive beer in red cans costing €1.99 - 6 pack. Now that's pretty good value for decent tasting beer in red cans we thinks.......... and makes the parking fine more affordable too!

Tomorrow we intend heading for somewhere else, where they don't waste as much paint marking lines along side of roads. In meantime, we are hoping the sun shines bright and the winds move gently by whilst we remain tied to wood fixed to dirt in this delightful marina.